By popular demand...

5/17/2012
The Romantic
5 Comments

I bring you a letter I wrote from the MTC as a missionary. This letter details what has now been termed the "infamous kissing incident".*

*No missionary rules were broken in the writing of this letter. xoxo-the Romantic

Dear Family,

I must relate to you now an experience which caused me great embarrassment this week.

As I mentioned in my last email, I have been feeling a bit under the weather. Come to find out, I actually had a sinus infection. But no worries!!! I went to the doctor's and I am all healed. I don't tell you this to worry, but just as an explanation as to how I was feeling last week. Feeling as I did, I decided to solider on anyway. There's so much to learn at the MTC! I would hate to miss class for anything. So, last Friday morning. I went to class as normal. I didn't participate too much. And thankfully, I think my teacher could see how sick I was, because he didn't call on me. Now, I must explain a little bit about my one of my teachers. He is a dear dear soul. But I think a little unprepared for how to teach a classroom full of all sisters. I mean, who would be? Isn't the MTC supposed to be full of Elders? So, I think our dear teacher feels a bit awkward at times, teaching all sisters. But we love him for it.... But what happened last week was unintentional! It was awful! It was horrible! It was undescribibly horrifically detremental to my soul!!!!!

Our teacher's shift was over. He was packing up his things to journey to the outside world. The night before, our other teacher had taught us the phrase for "see you later". So naturally I wanted to "SYL" (speak your language. a philosphy we live by at the MTC). I said to my teacher, "How do you say 'see you later' again? Bo-bo-ju-say-o?" I had just said the first Korean phrase that popped into my head. It flowed off my tounge so easily, it had to be "see you later".

But my teacher turned and looked at me with the most horrified expression I have ever beheld upon any person's face. Shock. Pure shock. That was the only emotion visible in the poor man's eyes.

"Cha-mae-nim (Sister). That is inappropriate," he said.

Immediately my face turned red as my brain went searching through the annals of my memory trying to remember 1) what I had said, and 2) where I had learned it.

I thought of Heartstrings (my favorite Korean soap opera). Nope. I didn't learn it from there. I thought of my old Korean room mate. Wasn't that what she said when she would answer the phone...???!?!?!?! Nope... It wasn't from there either.

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Maxwell. David. Smith. (now forever to be known as the bane of my existence) Max was a boy who lived in my ward during the past few semesters. I would consider us pretty good friends. After I recieved my call, Max would always pop his head in our apartment enthusiastically saying the only Korean phrase he knows which he learned from a Korean girl he dated: bo-bo-ju-say-o..... English translation: give me a kiss....

If you thought my face had been red before, you can imagine how fire engine red it turned then! I covered my face with my grammer book as the other sisters asked what I had said.

"It's not important!!! Brother P., I'm sooo sorry. That was horrible. It totally was inappropriate. I didn't mean it. I didn't know what I was saying." The words came flooding out in a torrent as I tried to fix the situation.

"Sister! What did you say??!?!" The other sisters quiered.

"It's not important... It is inappropriate.... Ok, I just told him to kiss me..." I briefly admitted. And then followed by saying, "I just had this friend who would say that to me all the time this summer! It was the first phrase that popped into my head! Don't worry. We never did it!"

The room erupted in raucous laughter!

My teacher then said, "Oh, you don't have to explain that to me...." He then procedded to pull his squeaky roll-y chair out of the room while the rest of the sisters died laughing at my mistake.

It wouldn't have been sooo bad. But it was thatteacher. And he was just happening to be observed that day by his supervisors (we found out later that they had already left... but even so)

The next day, some other sisters in our district greeted Brother P. with a friendly "bo-bo-ju-say-o". And we were able to laugh about it. But until the day I die, I don't think anyone will have had as an embarrassing language mistake as I did in the MTC.

We are The Anti-Austens, a collective of feisty, young Latter-Day Saints endowed with old-fashioned sensibilities (acquired through our Mormon upbringing and extensive reading of Jane Austen novels) trudging our way through the modern dating scene.
Our blog was first created in 2010 and based in the Latter-Day Saint epicenter of marriage: Brigham Young University. Since its creation, the blog has seen many writers come and go, but those of us who remain continue vigilant in our quest for a gentleman happily blessed with our ideal qualities. For a few of us, that quest has led us away from our original hunting ground (BYU) on to hopefully greener--and considerably less overwhelmed--pastures.

when I was in the MTC (Japanese speaking) by the end were were all very excited to get out (I'm sure you can relate. We looked up the word "excited" in our dictionaries and we all told each other for about a week how excited we were. We only stopped when our native Japanese teacher told us that the word we were using was not the type of "excited" missionaries should be using. =P